The American Spectator

WASHINGTON -- The stature and repute of our public figures are shaped, as I have written before, by this thing called Kultursmog. It is our political culture, a kultur utterly polluted by politics, left-liberal politics. For instance, it renders the Clintons, as reporter John F. Harris hymned in a recent hagiography: "the two most important political figures of their generation." It matters not that they are also the most scandal-prone couple in American history or that also numbered among the political figures of their generation is Newt Gingrich, the wizard behind the "Contract With America" that denied Democrats control of the House of Representatives and the Senate for the first time in 40 years. And forget not President George W. Bush, who also is from their generation, won two presidential terms, and after 9/11 completely revised American strategic thinking, introducing preemption to replace whatever was left of containment. Then too the 43rd president has -- facts are facts -- led America through the third longest period of economic growth since such records began being kept. Only Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton have presided over longer periods of unbroken economic growth.

The way the Kultursmog glorifies its loved ones and spatters on its outcasts is done both by pumping out epithets and practicing neglect -- both benign neglect and malign neglect. It simply does not acknowledge its loved ones' failings (benign neglect) or its outcasts' achievements (malign neglect). Consider the elevation of Senator Hillary Clinton since her defeat. She is exalted as a female pioneer, though she played down her gender through the first part of the race to stress her leadership qualities. Nowhere in the current laudations to her will you be reminded by the polluters of the Kultursmog of her early campaign finance irregularities (and shades of 1996, from Chinese donors), the planted questioners discovered in her audiences, or the Clinton machine's bullying of opponents. Then there were her lies about Bosnia and playing a role in the Northern Ireland peace treaty. All these scandals the Kultursmog simply neglects -- benign neglect.

Yet in treating those whom the pollutants of the Kultursmog consider unworthy we see the smog's malign neglect. In the case of President Bush, where, aside from this column, have you heard of the Bush Administration's protracted period of economic growth? Incidentally, the growth continues. We have not had a recession, as economists define one, and we are not likely to have one. Instead we may be entering into a period of inflation, a problem caused by the Fed. Nor is the President complimented for his splendid Supreme Court nominees, John Roberts and Samuel Alito. No president since FDR was hit with the instantaneous violence that Mr. Bush was hit with on 9/11, and most of those who now carp at his reaction are what FDR called, during World War II, "back seat drivers."

President Bush's war on terror is -- though it would be imprudent for him to boast of it -- a success. We have not been hit again, though no good is served by the president's crowing about this and thus goading the barbarians to act. As for Iraq, he listened to his proven commanders, adjusted tactics, and we are now winning. In a year or so we will be pretty much out of the country, and the tyrants of the world will recognize that it is foolhardy to pull a Saddam Hussein and taunt the United States. This out-going president is now being snickered at in the Kultursmog for his claims that history will judge him favorably. My guess is that he is right.

The Gallup organization reports that his disapproval rating is the highest of any prior president at 69%. Yet look who follows him, Harry Truman at 67%. When President Truman left office his approval rating was the lowest ever, 22%. At least the present president's approval rating is at 28%. The historically innocent have no appreciation for the steep uphill climb Truman's reputation has made. Nonetheless, the despised Harry of 1952 is the admired Harry today. George W. has reason to hope.

In the meantime conservatives should be grateful for his appointments to the federal bench. They should admire his supply-side tax cuts, and thank him for fighting today's isolationist currents that want to shut down free trade. When he took office we had free trade agreements with three countries. Today that figure stands at 15. Finally take another look at our foreign policy. The President went after those who were out to wreak havoc in the land and he has succeeded. As William Shawcross, the famous British opponent of the Vietnam War and champion of this one, recently wrote: "vindicated...will be the American people, and some of their leaders. God bless them!"

R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. is founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator, a contributing editor to the New York Sun, and an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute. His The Clinton Crack-Up: The Boy President's Life After the White House has recently been published by Thomas Nelson Inc.

WASHINGTON -- Think of it! Since early 2007 ambitious politicians have cluttered up the news with their campaigns for the presidency. Giants such as Dennis Kucinich, Joe Biden, and Bill Richardson have tantalized us with the possibility that America could, under their leadership, become the new Athens. Finally, three months ago the field was reduced to three candidates, and now it is down to two. Usually the last leg of a presidential campaign begins after Labor Day. From all I can tell, the last leg of Campaign '08 is already under way. Every day until Election Day, November 4, the American people are going to be assailed by the two candidates' clever rhetorical sallies, shocking exposes, pratfalls, and all the other cheap tricks that contribute to a candidate's presidential campaign. Is the thing possible? Will anyone still be paying attention come November?

Half the American people do not vote, and after this marathon campaign that number might well increase, owing to one of history's rarely noted undercurrents, sheer boredom. Yes, dissatisfaction is an undercurrent of history. That is what the Prophet Obama is relying on when he intones his mantra: "Change!" Nor is he the first presidential candidate to use this mantra. Bill Clinton relied on it in 1992. Well, boredom might also explain the electorates' yearning for "Change," and if Americans are bored after this election their boredom will be understandable.

However, another element of history is biography, a fact agreed upon by Carlyle and Emerson. The Obama biography is brief, as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton suggested in deriding his lack of "experience." Obama's is an interesting biography, but it does not recommend him for the presidency, not yet. Senator John McCain's biography by contrast is vast, and it does indeed recommend him for the presidency.

In preparing an essay on McCain recently, I took the occasion to review the McCain biography. It revealed two things that the candidate will undoubtedly be emphasizing. The first is character. The second is management. Consider the second first, for McCain's achievements as a manager are unusual for a senator. Senators usually have little record as managers. That is why governors make superior presidential candidates. An American president has to manage the largest organization in the world. As is typical of a senator, Obama has little managerial achievement. In fact there is only one. He organized Chicago community activists to channel money into their neighborhoods. That is not much of an achievement when compared to the achievements in McCain's biography, and Obama's community organizing put him in with some decidedly unsavory characters, for instance, the 1960s radical, Bill Ayers, an unrepentant bomb maker, and Antoin Rezko, the recently convicted conman.

McCain's management skills have yet to be publicized. After he came back from his five and a half years as a POW, McCain took command of the Navy's largest squadron, a force of A-7 attack aircraft. It was the largest by a lot. Most such squadrons in those days numbered 12 to 25. McCain's numbered 75, putting him in charge of a budget of over a billion dollars. This was during the post-Vietnam years, when Washington was cutting back on the military budget, and the McCain squadron was short on parts, maintenance crews, and even fuel. Some 25 of his aircraft were permanently disabled "hangar queens." Morale was low. In what John Lehman, secretary of the navy in the Reagan Administration, has called "a near miracle of leadership and management," McCain restored morale and got all 75 A-7s up and running. Fellow officers did not think it was possible, which brings us to the question of character.

After leaving Hanoi, McCain was never expected to fly again, such was the condition of his poorly treated injuries. The injuries included two broken arms, a broken leg, a broken shoulder, and the consequences of stab wounds to the groin and ankle. Navy doctors told him he would never again achieve "flight status." In a show of exemplary fortitude, the young pilot undertook grueling physical therapy. He not only flew again but he took command of his squadron and rebuilt it. Then he became Navy liaison to the Senate, where, by working with hawkish Republicans and Democrats, he helped reverse the decline of the military and lay the foundation for the Reagan military buildup that bankrupted the USSR.

In McCain's biography we see leadership, managerial skills, an ability to work with senators on both sides of the aisle, and a vigilance about national security that we do not see in his opponent. McCain will not need the cheap tricks of a presidential campaign to win on Election Day. His biography will be sufficient.

R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. is founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator, a contributing editor to the New York Sun, and an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute. His The Clinton Crack-Up: The Boy President's Life After the White House has recently been published by Thomas Nelson Inc.

Washington -- In all the hullabaloo surrounding Super Tuesday over the primaries and caucuses, perhaps the most important news story of the day slipped from sight, or was reported only in fragments. I have in mind our intelligence community's annual appearance before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. There our spy chiefs appeared to report how the war against terror is going.

How I wish I had a seat on that committee just for the day. I would have a few questions of my own. One would be, "Have any of you fellows detected the whereabouts of Boy Clinton?" Since the South Carolina primary when Bill fanned the smoldering embers of his party's white racism, America's most recent redneck president has slipped from sight. As I reported in my book on Bill's restless life in retirement, The Clinton Crack-Up, his record of campaigning for others is dismal. In 2004 of the 14 candidates he campaigned for 12 lost. Doubtless Hillary's strategists are even now pondering where to hide the big lovable oaf lest he do her campaign any more injury. They might consider hiding Hillary too. She is proving to be an implausible candidate.

But back to our spy chiefs' appearance on Capitol Hill -- a more serious question that I would like to have asked would be about that National Intelligence Estimate of late 2007. Why were its claims about Iran's nuclear plans so out of sync with those that the Bush administration had been making? Contrary to the administration, the NIE report claimed Iran had halted its nuclear arms program. What is more, this report conflicted with intelligence from France, the UK, and Israel. In fact, Israel's spy agency, Mossad, reported this very week that Iran will have nuclear weapons in three years. Gratefully, National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell explained the discrepancy. The NIE report was faulty.

As reported in the New York Sun, "The director of national intelligence is backing away from his agency's assessment...." McConnell explained that "If I had 'til now to think about it, I probably would change a few things." One would be "the way we describe the Iranian nuclear program." The Iranians have halted work on nuclear warheads, said McConnell, but they proceed with the more dangerous business of attempting the enrichment of uranium and procuring the capacity to hit North Africa and Europe with nuclear arms. So I am putting my money on Mossad's reports.

McConnell also gave a grave warning to senators about the survival of Pakistan, telling them that, "In the last year, the number of terrorist attacks and deaths were greater than in the past six years combined." The terrorists include members of al Qaeda and the Taliban, all of whom threaten Pakistan's "very survival." Another news story coming from McConnell at these momentous hearings is that al Qaeda is planning more attacks against the United States and had a plan in the works for attacking the White House as recently as 2006. Homegrown al Qaeda cells here have been primitive, but McConnell registered his concern that new, more sophisticated cells might threaten us domestically in the years ahead.

All these news stories are pretty gloomy. Whether the Democratic presidential candidates admit it or not, we are in a war with Islamofascists that will go on for years. Rolling up our forces abroad and bringing them home will neither end nor ameliorate the threat. But there was one spy chief on the Hill this week with good news. CIA Director Michael Hayden confirmed that the CIA has used waterboarding and it works prodigiously. The agency only used this technique of simulated drowning three times since 9/11, saving it for terror leaders who have posed the utmost threat to our security, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, mastermind of attack on the USS Cole, Abu Zubaydah, the brains behind the thwarted millennium attacks, and Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who directed 9/11 -- as deserving a trio of barbarians as any waterboardist can imagine. From these brutes -- and in the wink of an eye -- Hayden reports that CIA got a quarter of all the human intelligence it obtained from 2002 to 2006. Now we also know that this impressive interrogation technique was undertaken not only with the knowledge of the Bush administration but also the knowledge of then House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and then ranking Senate Intelligence Committee member Jay Rockefeller.

So the news from our chief intelligence practitioners is not all bad. It is sobering, however, and should have been on the front pages of newspapers throughout the country.

R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. is founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator, a contributing editor to the New York Sun, and an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute. His The Clinton Crack-Up: The Boy President's Life After the White House has recently been published by Thomas Nelson Inc.

WASHINGTON -- In the acrid aftermath of the South Carolina primary I think it is safe to say that Toni Morrison, the novelist, was dealing in fiction when she pronounced Bill Clinton our first black president. After watching him huff and puff up the issue of race in a way that Americans have not seen since the presidential campaigns of the late George Wallace, the former Boy President, rather than being our first black president, is our second redneck president.

I say Clinton is our second redneck president because first came Jimmy Carter. Jimmy did not play the role of the bigot while in the White House, not exactly. Rather as the historian Betty Glad demonstrated in her fine biography of him, Jimmy Carter: In Search of the Great White House, Jimmy played the racial politics at the beginning of his political career in Georgia while seeking the governorship. That is not to say that as president he did not use race divisively. He was frequently given to transforming policy disagreements into a matter of white voters repressing black voters, that is to say Republicans repressing blacks. He was forever presuming himself to be the champion of black people and Republicans to be anti-black. Any disagreement on domestic issues he was apt to present as part of a Republican "Southern strategy" to win Southern white votes.

Now after the Clintons' treacherous campaign against Senator Barack Obama, we see that some Democrats will practice a Southern strategy too. Yet they do it within their own party, dividing Democrats along racial and even ethnic lines. This is the repellent absurdity to which identity politics has sunk. Why two Southern politicians would play the racial politics -- each in his different way -- is mystifying. Southern politicians, more than any other politicians in this country, should be aware of the racial antagonisms of the past and the potential for racial violence even today. It is especially mystifying to see Clinton play the race card. I do not credit him with many virtues, but the one virtue I thought he had was racial tolerance. Nowhere on his record is there any evidence that he ever sought to benefit from bigotry against blacks. That is no longer the case.

To be sure, as president he treated race the way President Carter did, interpreting policy differences between him and his Republican opponents as inspired by the Republicans' presumed racism. Now, after his repeated acts of treachery in South Carolina, we see a Bill actively turning whites and blacks in his own party against each other. Moreover, he wants to encourage ill-will between Latinos and blacks within his party. He is making these invidious efforts purely to bring his family back to power. Though I have called him a sociopath, I thought that when it came to the issue of race he might be more scrupulous.

Race is the cruel burden this country has borne since its inception. We fought a bloody civil war over it. The evil of Jim Crow followed after that war, featuring widespread injustices against blacks and violence between the races. From north to south, race riots have broken out in this country for generations. After the heroism and idealism of the civil right movement the country has steadily moved toward racial tolerance and an improvement of the material condition of all minorities. Admittedly there remain instances of unspeakable cruelty, hate crimes committed by brutes on both sides. Yet with a growing sense of tolerance and a growing economy offering jobs and other opportunities, we have reason to believe that racial harmony is replacing the racial strife of the past.

Now comes the Clinton quest for the Democratic nomination and what journalists politely call "the race card" is being practiced. It is a dangerous game. Thankfully, racial tolerance is probably too far along for the Clintons to screw it up. The divide between the races will continue to narrow. But perhaps you will understand my astonishment after the Clintons' demagoguery in South Carolina: they are actually worse than I have been saying.

R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. is founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator, a contributing editor to the New York Sun, and an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute. His The Clinton Crack-Up: The Boy President's Life After the White House has recently been published by Thomas Nelson Inc.

WASHINGTON -- With the leading candidates for the Democratic nomination charging each other with racial bigotry, I think it is safe to observe that 2008 will not be a progressive year in the Democratic Party. Increasingly the Clinton campaign puts me in mind of presidential campaigns waged by the late segregationist George Wallace. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton even has Wallace's surly style. Yet Wallace was rarely accused of lying. Hillary is caught lying every few days, and the lies are not even as clever as those of her mendacious husband, the sex maniac. Of course, when the fur ceases to fly over these racial charges, I think it will be clear that Hillary is not nearly the bigot Wallace was, but neither is she as nice a person. I cannot think of one of Governor Wallace's household pets disappearing under mysterious circumstances.

Moving over to the Republican race, none of the candidates has yet to charge another with racial bigotry. None has done oppositional research on an opponent's kindergarten records. And none has been caught raising campaign funds through a Chop Suey Connection. Yet, we have repeatedly heard the ugly charge of flip-floppery flung about wantonly, and it is not a reference to casual footwear but to casual dissembling on issues. In fact, every candidate still in the Republican race has been accused of flip-floppery, occasionally using multiple feet.

Thus far the 2008 campaign in both parties is very unsatisfactory. Something is missing, and, as I see it, that something is dignity. At this stage Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama come closest to displaying dignity; but even they fall short, owing to the environment in which they must operate, an environment shaped by a prima donna electorate and a press that encourages soap opera. Both are the consequence of idiotic state caucuses or state primaries, inflated into circuses by enormous sums of money, and all lacking in party discipline. It is time to return to nominating presidential candidates in national political conventions, the same kind of conventions that gave us Roosevelts and Eisenhower and the 1960 race between Kennedy and Nixon -- a very classy affair compared to today's infantile confrontations.

Today national conventions are a thing of the past because mid-20th century reformers accused them of being undemocratic. Actually, they were as democratic as today's caucuses and primaries. Moreover, they reduced the need for the vast fundraising operations that are our contemporary reformers' nightmare. Most of the delegates at national conventions were chosen democratically at their state conventions, where party platforms were pounded out and presidential nominees chosen. The enormous expense of media advertising and get-out-the-vote drives was unnecessary, as most of the participants were volunteers, loyal party members, or public-spirited citizens prevailed upon by neighbors to get involved as Democrats or Republicans.

What is more, seasoned politicians were influential every step of the way, right up to the convention. In the time of competitive national political conventions, presidential candidates still had to campaign throughout the nation but at far less expense. Then once the national convention was convened, they had to present themselves to each state delegation. Reformers inveighed against the spectacle of floor demonstrations, with delegates wearing silly hats and parading up the aisles, but such high jinks were harmless, far less expensive than today's vast media buys, and turned up presidential nominees far more impressive than today's poseurs.

Reading Arthur Schlesinger's Journals, I came across the now-deceased historian's observations of JFK at the 1960 Democratic national convention. Kennedy was in a pretty good position to win the nomination, but he had to present himself to state delegations nonetheless. He particularly disrelished visiting the segregationist Southerners, but he did so. He already had a sense of what they were like but now had an opportunity to review his estimates of them. They, in turn, got a sense of him. This was not an costly blitz through a primary state, accompanied by expensive and misleading media barrages and transient opportunities to embarrass his rivals. It was a serious meeting among Democrats who were deeply involved in governing their states. It was adult politics.

If our reformers really want to end the nightmare of $100 million primary campaigns and the trashiness of this primary season, they will bring us back to the good old days of national political conventions that really matter. I long to see candidates in silly hats rather than in silly situations.

R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. is founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator, a contributing editor to the New York Sun, and an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute. His The Clinton Crack-Up: The Boy President's Life After the White House has recently been published by Thomas Nelson Inc.